Biology is my Passion

Yesterday was just an awesome day. Like awesomely awesome. In the morning, I had to go somewhere with dad for some work. Then when it was done, he dropped me at school on his way back to office. I reached the school at around half past nine when I realized that none of my classmates had turned up to school. I was confused and texted them to ask if they would be coming for the biology class at 10’O clock. All of them replied in negative. At first I was angry because I was the only one there at school from my class but later on I decided to leave school early. I waited for some time, played a couple of table tennis matches and then left for home.

Reaching home at around 11’O clock, I opened up my computer to find a twitter friend online on MSN. Like, I have never talked to him so early in the morning because either I was in school or sleeping by this time. So I just grabbed some biscuits from the cabinet and came upstairs to talk to him. We talked for around 10 minutes when something interesting struck my mind.

“Hey. We have been talking like since so long but never got a chance to do a voice chat. Are you free? Can we do it today?” was what I said. And he was like, “Okay sure. Why not.” I was overwhelmed to hear this. So I just quickly went up to my closet and came back with the mic and headphones. Yes, I now keep my mic and headphones inside my closet coz just last week mum scolded me for keeping it on the table because it looked so messy then. Infact she ordered me to keep my table neat and clean and to keep all the books on the shelf when I am done with studying. I mean, this is not what I used to do before. All the books that I was using while studying used to be on my table, and they remained like that for weeks. However, times have changed now. Mom’s orders are the top-most priority so well I will try to keep my table organized and clean from now on.

So well back to the point again. We started off with the voice chat and it went pretty good Alhamdolillah. We talked about various things. We shared our stories from school and the extra-curricular activities we are taking part in. We also discussed about sending in university applications. It was such a great experience. And my favorite part was when we talked about biology. I mean biology can be boring at times and its difficult too when you just have to rote-learn the various terms used there, but on a whole, it is amazing because it just shows us how complex the human body is and how perfectly Allah is running our biological system without us having to do any conscious effort for all those processes going on inside our body. Biology shows us the greatness of Allah and has resulted in me being more closer to Islam than ever Alhamdolillah.

And this love for biology that I have, I would like to give half of the credit to my awesome biology teacher, Sir Javed. He has been an inspiration for me in all these years and I personally think he has been the best biology teacher who has ever taught me. Like seriously. His unique style of teaching, his funny way of pronouncing specific words, his particular pathan accent, and the way he scolds us. All these things have just attracted me towards him. It wont be wrong if I say that I love him!

So umm….we talked for around an hour that day when I noticed that the time for electricity breakdown was near. So I just bade farewell to him, said thanks for the awesome conversation, and went offline.

So friends, This is all for today. I totally enjoyed yesterday’s events. Everything went so fine and perfect. I hope everything in life just moves on as smoothly as it did yesterday. Life, I think, is better when you start expecting less from it. You enjoy your life more when you are happy with whatever you have, no matter how little it is. I think I did the same and now I am enjoying what life is offering me. Goodbye for now people. I hope to blog really soon again. Take Care!

Long time no see?

Hey guys. How have you all been? Its been such a long time since I last blogged. I know I haven’t been regular here and I am extremely sorry for that. Well, reasons? You want me to give reasons why I didn't blog in this period of 3 months? Ermm…as if I am gonna tell you! Hah. Actually, a lot of things have been going on in my life recently which have kept me busy and so I dint really get time to blog. I mean, I wasn’t that busy but still all these things had made my mind come to a halt.

And I thought that even if I blog I wont make sense. Seriously, I was going insane in those days. Thankfully, I have my brain back now so its all okay so far.

So well. Happy with the reasons are you? No? Haha. Who cares about you. Well, lets move on. So I will just give you a glimpse of what has been happening in these past months. Erm….so school started in August  and it has been driving me crazy since then. A2 is even harder than AS as suspected, with workload being twice as much as the previous year. Maths and Biology have been pretty okay but physics and chemistry. What the hell has happened to physics and chemistry I just don’t understand. They used to be so easy a year back and now see. I don’t even know what this man teaches in the physics class. I simply attend all of his classes, copy whatever he teaches and just rote-learn all what he has taught. And finally end up forgetting all that I learned. Hah.

I mean, I just cant bear this. I need some good teacher to teach me physics. To make me understand what they actually mean by all those definitions and theories and laws they tell in the class. Its pathetic. Really.

Well, enough ranting about studies. Now let me tell you about the inter-school table tennis competition that took place in our school a month back. I took part in it and  played well in the preliminary rounds but sadly after successfully winning 3 matches, I lost in the quarter-finals. It wasn’t a tough match. Really! I made some major mistakes and they proved to be fateful for me. Well, I just have this habit of being pessimistic all this time when I lose. Gaah. Anyways, let me tell you the positive outcome of this competition. Owing to my good performance in those matches, the sports teacher offered me a place in the school’s table tennis team. It was a moment of pride for me to accept it. That day I came back home and told all this to mom and dad and they were so happy to hear this. I am glad I made it into the school’s team. Its like, first milestone achieved and now more to come on.

Oh and I just remembered one more reason as to why I wasn’t blogging these days. Its like, recently I was phobic that I wont publish those posts of mine which aren’t well-written so like I used to write posts, re-read them after I was done with writing them and they seemed so bad to me that I actually ended up deleting them. Well, this is not gonna happen from now on Inshallah. I will just write stuff, edit it as per my needs, and will publish it no matter what anyone thinks of me and my writing skills. I don’t care about you. YES. I don’t.

Haha. I just noticed this is turning out to be one long post. I bet I have never written like that ever. This is miraculous. Haha. I will end it here I guess. Gotta go study now. Take care. Bye.

Finally, I realized it

Today was a pretty ordinary day except that I woke up way too early. Infact, I din’t sleep the whole night.

Last night, I was angry on some friend, and there it din’t let me sleep. I had some issues with this person and I wanted to clear them as soon as possible. So I came up online, emailed, and then was randomly surfing the net when this caught my attention.

Shagufta Abbas is a new friend from twitter, and it was really heart-rending to know that she din’t have her mother alive.

I mean I am not a big fan of poetry at all, but this one had simplicity in it and that’s what caught my attention.

Reading it all, a drop of tear dropped on my hand and I realized pretty soon why it was so. It was like, it made me realize how much we all take our parents for granted. My mom cooks for me, she does all the laundry for the house, cleans the house and everything in the world that I don’t know while I am still lying down on my bed, sound asleep. Dad takes me out wherever I want him to, makes me buy things mom won’t ever allow but NO !

I never realized their importance, Always took them for granted. Always thought that they are doing this coz it’s their responsibility. Always thought that I could just drop by saying “Thanks” for every effort they make, and that will be enough.

But it was today I realized, that I was infact WRONG. They were not here in this world to take care of me. They were born as free individuals to live their lives the way they wanted to. But they sacrificed a lot of their social activities just for me.

And so I think I need to do things to make them comfortable. I think what they want the most from me is my time. I have been pretty addicted to my computer coz of the internet but I will just try from today onwards to give ‘em more time and make them happy.

It’s 7.30 AM now so I will sum it up here. I think all parents in this world are unique but they do the same things for their children so that they don't have to worry for anything until they are alive. I guess it’s high time that we all learn to love our parents and show our affection towards them. And there’s no better way of doing this than to spend more time with them, and do things for them that make them comfortable. 

So just GO and give them a tight hug.And make them realize how much you love them !

I love my parents, and can’t even imagine my life without them. Can you ?

WIndows XP Installation Guide

Installing Windows is something that few would consider to be something to be actually TAUGHT to people since most of the people now are able to do it fine by themselves. Yes, installing Windows is really easy and since a large number of the people know how to install Windows, you, the people who still don’t know and are hesitant to do it without some guidance, should learn it too.  I am here for you, to provide the guidance you want. Let’s begin the Windows installation guide.

Do note I am covering Windows XP’s installation. The installation process for all XP editions is the same so no need to be fussy about that, we are covering a Professional edition installation but the process is absolutely identical to any other Windows XP version.

First of all, you would need:

1.        A bootable Windows XP Setup CD
2. .      A CD or DVD Rom

You would need to configure your CD Rom device as the first boot device in order to initiate the setup by booting from CD. You would need to enter the BIOS for this, to enter the blue/ purple world of BIOS, press the BIOS setup key(this is usually flashed on the screen immediately after the PC is turned on) when the PC is turned on. Once you have made sure that the CD Rom is your 1^st Boot device, you can exit the BIOS ( saving the changes ) and popping in the XP Setup CD.

A message would flash on the screen, something like ‘Press any key to boot from CD’. Well, as the message says, press any key to boot. After you press the key, you would see another message informing you that setup is inspecting your PC’s configuration. This would go shortly thereafter, to be replaced by a blue screen.

Drivers would be loaded, as you would see at the bottom of the blue screen. After a while, you would see a message on the blue screen saying ‘Setup Windows XP’. Press Enter to proceed. Agree to the license agreement by pressing F8. If your PC would be having an existing Windows XP installation at the time of the setup, you would see the setup offering you to repair the existing Windows installation. Don’t repair i.e. Press ESC, proceed to do a clean install. Choose a partition where Windows would be installed. Now, you would be prompted to format the partition, either with NTFS file system or FAT file system. It’s our recommendation that you format using NTFS file system since Windows XP is based on the NT kernel. Don’t take shortcuts, take your time and do not opt for the Quick Format method.

After the formatting is complete, the setup would immediately start copying Windows files to your Hard disk. When this is complete, you would be prompted to restart your PC. After rebooting, you would again see the ‘Press any key to boot from CD’ message. DO NOT PRESS ANY KEY, LET THE MESSAGE GO. If you make the mistake to press a button at the time, the setup would be restarted. Now, you would see Windows XP complete with the Windows logo loading.

The dark blue would be replaced with light blue. For some minutes, the setup would not show any progress bar but the ‘Windows is being installed’ text. After this, you would see the first progress bar, that of ‘Installing Devices’. Once the progress bar would be completed a window would appear, prompting you to configure some details. Fill in the details and proceed. You will see a new progress bar appear named’ Installing Network’ after your fill in the details required by the setup. The bar would soon be replaced by a new window appearing and asking you to configure your network settings. Again it is our recommendation that you simply choose TYPICAL SETTINGS and not to indulge in any other work except the main Windows installation. Face it, you can do it later when your Windows is finally installed.  This would be succeeded by a flurry of further progress bars appearing and finishing. Finally you would see a ‘Saving settings’ bar. When this bar finishes, your PC will restart.

You may think that you have almost completed the installation at this point. Again the message would prompt you to press any key to boot from CD but do NOT press any key, as it would restart the whole setup process. Let the message go away, you would see Windows XP loading now. Windows would now configure your resolution, click on OK when it notifies you about this. You are done with the installation at this point so relax, take a chill, the scary part is gone. Just fill in the details that it asks you (Your USER ID, password etc). You can skip the ‘Checking for Internet Connectivity’ phase, its useless as you can check for connectivity yourself after Windows is finally loaded. Finally, its your decision whether to register than or later with Microsoft. Once done with all of these press ‘Next’ and BOOM! You would see the familiar Windows XP welcome screen. Just a moment later, you would be seeing the hilly desktop background with the only icon on the desktop being recycle bin.

This would be the complete end of the installation. Your Windows would be successfully installed and now you can check if any of your devices need further software installation to make them fully functional; but Hey! That’s another story and I suppose that you can do all the rest by yourself now. In fact you should now be able to install Windows by yourself in the future.

Installing Windows is a piece of cake, isn’t it?

Video by Shaheryar Hasan. The above text is written by Hammad Hussain.

I was lucky

“Dad, where are we heading to?”

“Going to your nana’s house, he’s sick”

“Oh.”

Parking the car, my dad and family moved towards the main gate of Nana’s house. Just when I moved out of the car, I heard a sound. It was, however too low for me to even register the cause of the sound. Shaking my head, thinking it must have been some minor hallucination, I got out of the car to catch with my family. As we got in, my mamoon greeted us and escorted us towards the drawing room. Nana, when told we were there, stood up from his bed and came into the drawing room.

After the usual inquiring of health etc, my parents got involved into some discussion with my nana. Meanwhile, I checked out the new mobile phone my mamoon had bought a week ago.

We stayed there for like an hour. It is pretty funny that I didn’t even think about my cell phone the time we were there. As soon as we got out, I tried to find my mobile in each one of my pockets, but to my surprise, it wasn’t there. Tensed, I ran back into the house to have a look if I had accidentally dropped it somewhere in the drawing room. But, it was nowhere to be found.

Taking small reluctant steps, I came out of the house and started to walk towards my car to seat in and tell my parents the truth. Reaching for the car, I opened up the door, when suddenly I stepped on something hard. I found it weird and thought that it must be some stone on which I have stepped. I gave it a look, and what I saw was unbelievable.

It was my cell phone. Yes, my cell phone. I quickly picked it up and got seated into the car.

”What took you so long? We were waiting for you since the last 10 minutes.” Mom said.

The surprising fact however was that my mobile was still there, perfectly intact, although given the law and order situation in Karachi and theft becoming commonplace, it would have most likely been stolen. Now what I take it is that this was a blessing from God, which he intended to save me from trouble and pain. The experience nevertheless caused a marked change in my attitude. I am now more ‘Mobile-conscious’.

I guess guys that all for now. Care for your mobiles. After all money doesn’t grow on trees, or does it?

Alas, these effin Exams are Over =D

Finally, this exam marathon is over and now I have the perfect chance to blog. And the reason – well, my exams just finished 3 days ago and so I AM FREE =D Hmm, so I see that the last time I blogged was a month ago. Long time there.

So this last month, May, was one Hell of a thing. I din't do anything properly except studies. No proper food routine, no sports, no going out, no proper sleeping schedule, no nothing ! It was all going weird and seriously, it made me sick (not literally). I mean I was freaking out, and I had Actually started to eat less =P But still Alhamdolillah, days passed by quick (well, not that quick =P) and all exams went well (except Physics =P).

And so as I am finally free, I have plans to watch movies this summer (recommendations provided by friends) , go out and party (=P), and OFCOURSE !! TABLE TENNIS =D Seriously, I love this sport, and I am NOT gonna leave it at any cost.

Hmm ………. OH YEAH ! I forgot to mention one more thing. I have plans to work on a project, in the summers. A friend mentioned it to me during the exam days. I liked the idea, and told him that we should start work on it after these exams are over. He agreed.

Well, so ….. enough of it for this post.

Will try to tweet regularly from now on. =)

Views from an avid Pakistani Cricket Fan

It was an overcast day at London on June 21^st, 2009. Expectations were high and Pakistanis were saying their prayers all over the world for their team which had unexpectedly turned the tables in the later part of the tournament and had reached the final. Many people still remembered the memories etched into their minds of Pakistan's Worldcup victory in 1992 under the leadership of the great Imran Khan. Not surprisingly, people expected another Khan, Younis Khan, to lead Pakistan to that glory again. The world of cricket had crashed for avid Pakistani cricket fans ever since there was a terrorist attack on the Sri Lankan team at Lahore earlier that year. Elders and youngsters alike had the same enthusiasm for the final.

The match began with high hopes for Pakistanis. Straight into the fifth ball of the match's first over, the new rookie left arm pacemen Mohammad Aamir struck gold by dismissing Dilshan, the highest run scorer in the tournament for a mere duck.

Of course Pakistanis went into high spirit after the first attack. Their relentless attack crippled the highly skilled Sri Lankans and reduced them to a total of just 138 runs in 20 overs. Pakistan then set forth to chase that target. Although the batting lacked the 'smashing' part until the later part of the innings, Pakistanis' hearts thumped with each and every run taken and a wicket fallen. It finally came down crashing to a few overs. This is precisely when Shahid Afridi made the moment for the Pakistanis for years to follow. The six towering over the Lords stadium, was not only aimed to clear the boundary but to win the hearts of the Pakistanis who wanted nothing more but to have the privilege to bringing the Cup to their country. Just the moment when the ball crossed the boundary line, people sensed that something was going to happen, Of course Pakistan still needed some runs to win but they sensed it. It was, a feeling, that perhaps no word or adjective could define, but it did penetrate the hearts of the millions of people watching the match at home on large TV screens. No matter what the model of the TV they were watching the match on was, no matter where they were watching the match was, there was the same happiness engrossed in every single Pakistani soul. They smelled triumph even before it came.

Of course, millions more tuned in to see their national cricket team hold the Cup and run around the stadium overjoyed at the mere thought of winning the Worldcup.

That day, it was like every sins had been washed out. People phoned their friends and relatives and blabbed for hours about this and that players' performance. No one knew which player to praise more, whether the new Aamir who took the much prized wicket of Dilshan, or Boom Boom Afridi who hit a booming six into the crowd right in the midst of tension. The captain, Younis Khan found a good reason to retire on a good note from T20 Cricket.

I had only heard about the celebrations of the 1992 Worldcup victory of Pakistanis from my elders but that day, I witnessed the scene. The scene that must have happened in Melbourne, and in Pakistan, the people's gleaming faces. Yes indeed one commentator was right, “ The young ones watching would of course remember this and recount it to their younger ones later on”. I am proud to say that I witnessed a moment in Pakistani and cricketing history that I can always narrate with joy to other people who would never get the chance to witness that particular moment. The moment of joy, the moment of Pakistan winning the T20 Worldcup when it seemed like cricket had ended for Pakistan.

Now, another Worldcup tournament is just around the corner. For Pakistanis, it means the absolute need to win this tournament too to retain the title of being the 'T20 Champions'. Of course, there are cricket gurus and speculators who would say that the current Pakistani team lacks the players or the morale to win the 'big one' again too but I would say this, Pakistanis have proved themselves to be a really unpredictable team but when their high time comes, nothing can beat them, be it ordinary players from their own side or formidable ones from the competing side. This time, it can be their high time too, and of course if it is, then victory is certain. Rock on, Pakistan.

Written By Hammad Hussain